5 minute read
Education Corner Podcast Interview
EDUCATION CORNER PODCAST
Dr. Kelly Pickard Smith and Dr. Amy Bonsall
DISCUSSING THEIR RECENTLY LAUNCHED BOOK ResearcHER
Would you like to tell us a bit about yourselves as people and researchers?
Amy: As a founding Co-Director of the Women in Academia Support Network (WIASN), I am utterly committed and passionate about making sure that absolutely everybody has the opportunity to reach higher education, and to pursue that if it’s something that they want to do. There are so many barriers, particularly to women, that make it something that needs challenging. Women, those who identify as women and non-binary people, need spaces to be able to feel included and be able to talk safely.
Kelly: I did my secondary education in the 80s on a council estate in the North, so you can kind of imagine the quality of education at the time and the societal expectations of people growing up on council estates, the kind of careers that you might go into. I wanted to be an astrophysicist, and I was very guided into: “Are you sure you don’t want to be a secretary? Office worker? Or, work in a shop?” At the same time you had people like Professor Brian Cox with nearly waist-length curly hair going to university to study Astrophysics. I looked very similar to him at the time with my perm. I was told: “You’re from a council estate, you’re a girl, that career is not for you.”
I then ended up doing a Masters and then a PhD, which questioned why heavily mathematical careers like Science, Technology, Engineering etcetera were deemed as being only for certain kinds of people, and why we believe that it is for the uppermiddle class genius types, and that they are the only people interested in these when I also was, but didn’t quite get there. I am now co-founding this research support network with Amy, so that we can support anybody who wants to do any kind of research, helping them to work towards those goals. Pegging certain types of people to ‘stay in their
ResearcHER
lane’ is not helpful. We actually need everybody on board if we are going to progress research and if we are going to progress as a human race. Equity is a part of everything that I do.
What gave you the courage to pursue what you truly perceived was your destiny?
Kelly: Good question. When someone tells me that I can’t do something, I will go out of my way to show them that I can. Education is a journey, if you don’t achieve what you want to achieve when you’re young, don’t worry. You have your whole life to pursue whatever kind of learning it is that floats your boat. There is no set time to finish learning. Keep persevering and following the passion of whatever it is that you love.
Introduce us to Women in Academia Support Network (WIASN). Can you tell me a little bit more about this? I understand that it has 13,500 members to date.
Amy: It was founded by six of us. This includes: Kelly, myself, Eleonora Belfiore, Catherine Beard, Maxine Horne and Maria Barrett. In the early days we ran it together. We went through various situations of trying to keep it closed and private, trying to work out ways of working, trying to work out guidelines, dealing with different issues as they arose and trying to work out what sort of ‘space’ we wanted it to be. Right from the beginning, we had a really clear vision as to what we wanted it to be like. It was the idea that if you were a woman and if you were a researcher, then this could be a space for you.
How did you get the idea for the book and what was the process like?
Kelly: What else would academics do but write a book? We didn’t want to write a book about us, and this is one of the things that makes WIASN a little bit different. We try as best as we can to showcase the voices of others.
We wanted to move away from this stereotypical idea that women are just one thing. We’ve got women from a whole range of different backgrounds in there. We wanted the book to talk of both their research and their lives. We wanted to explore the different journeys that they have taken to this research. Each chapter gives the reader an opportunity to try out an activity or something related to the research that the chapter authors have undertaken. We explore their journeys, their different socio-economic backgrounds, we have women from really different backgrounds, some from working class backgrounds, some with a disability, some who are members of the LGBTQIA+ community. We wanted to bring the idea of research careers to young people at a much earlier
age so that they have it on the horizon. These kinds of careers very often don’t get talked about by careers advisors and schools at the crucial transition times, such as moving from primary to secondary, to GCSE and A Level years. Even when you go to finish a graduation degree and you begin to ask: “What next?” Research as a career is rarely talked about for women, and it needs to be talked about more.
Amy: There is a much larger number of women going to do undergraduate degrees, but that falls off a cliff once you get to the more senior levels. Knowledge is power. Our hope is that if, from an early career stage, you know you’d like to make it all the way to professor and beyond, then you can equip yourself with what you need to be able to do that.
We would like to thank Dr. Kelly Pickard Smith and Dr. Amy Bonsall (co-editors of ResearcHER) for giving up their time to speak to us.
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TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST
https://books.emeraldinsight. com/book/detail/ researcher/?k=9781803827346
